Chapter 28 #2
“She’d been sleeping with this guy for over a year and lying to me about shifts, overtime, and working over the holidays.
I don’t know if she was ever faithful, honestly.
She never did answer that question.” He throws another rock toward the river, and this one sinks in the center.
“She said she was sorry, that she still loved me. But I refused to discuss it or even look at her, and she left to go stay at her parents’ house—or maybe her boyfriend’s, I don’t know. ”
“Wait, Beau, Bianca has a baby—with someone else?” I ask.
He shakes his head—a brief, barely perceptible quiver. “She lost the baby. A few days later. And I didn’t accept her call, so she went through it alone.”
My heartbeat hammers in my skull. Beau lost his family, too. He had said he understood what I was going through, and I dismissed him.
“I know I wasn’t a perfect husband. I was often distracted and grumpy, so I was partially to blame.
And I wondered, if I had been more understanding, if I had heard her out, or hadn’t jumped to judgment, she could have had a healthier pregnancy or at least not gone through the loss alone . ..” He trails off.
“Beau.” I gather the courage to inch closer and slide my palms to his jaw, bringing his pained focus to me. “Anyone would have been hurt and angry. It wasn’t your fault. That’s not how miscarriage works.”
“I know.” His eyes search mine. I’m not accustomed to the intensity of his unguarded gaze. His deep-brown eyes are so crystalline they appear to have their own light source. “I mean, intellectually, I know that. But my guilt, my heart?” He shakes his head.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I repeat, but I don’t think he hears me because he keeps going.
“When I married Bianca, I meant every word of my vows. And I was so angry at her for destroying that. But the truth was, she wasn’t the only one who didn’t love enough. She didn’t love me enough to be faithful. And I didn’t love her enough to forgive her.”
Only Beau would feel as if he broke his vows after his wife disregarded the most sacred one.
For all of Beau’s faults, lack of loyalty is not one of them.
I think of all the times he’s come to my rescue, even after I hurt him.
He’s been so loyal to me—and our vows were exchanged in Halloween costumes with wilted dandelions. “That’s a lot to forgive, Beau.”
“For better or worse.”
“Forsaking all others,” I retort.
Another firework lights up the sky, and we sit in silence as it fades.
“I know the baby may not have even been mine, but it still felt like mine, you know? The miscarriage still felt like a loss.”
“Of course it did,” I whisper, and he drops his head until our foreheads are kissing.
My guarded Beau is deceivingly soft at his center—so sweet and fragile under all that stoicism and reserve.
I want to avenge him. I want to cry for him.
I want to kiss him until he forgets the woman who broke his heart.
“And my marriage, as dishonest as it was, felt like a loss, too.” His words are barely a hush against the wind, the fireworks, and the rush of the river.
“It was Bianca’s loss. She lost you . She lost everything.
Your wit and attentiveness, your willingness to do anything for the people you care about—even when they don’t know how to accept it.
Your planning and preparation for every disaster.
Your ESP for the perfect budget motel with a view, or campsite with front-row seats to fireworks.
You only lost the fabricated version of her. ”
One side of his mouth lifts into a tired smile. “You’ve spent the last several weeks telling me I’m a grumpy, pompous know-it-all.”
“You contain multitudes, Beauregard.”
He barks out a laugh, and it breaks the tension. I’m so grateful for it. I don’t know how to make him feel better about all he lost, but at least I can make him laugh. Without thinking, I swipe my thumb across his cheekbone. His expression straightens, his tongue peeking out to wet his lips.
“The truth,” he says.
I open my mouth to ask what he means, but he presses a finger to my lips.
“Why did you get so weird last night?”
“Oh.” This truth thing is looking like a stupid promise in hindsight. I don’t know how to explain. “I guess I got overwhelmed and a little scared.”
“About what?”
“About losing you as my friend, and”—I pinch my eyes closed, unable to look at his face, which drills past every barricade to see my soul, and say this next thing—“about everything it made me feel.”
“Ophelia,” he says, his voice low and teasing, “that is the point. When a man and a woman—”
I attempt to shift away, but he grasps my hand. “I expected to feel pleasure, Beau. But I felt so many”—I gulp in a breath and spit out the last word like a gnat in my drink—“emotions.”
I sneak a glance to find him staring at me. I imagine it’s the face he wears while struggling with a dataset containing unexplained outliers, or discovering an artifact that changes his understanding of history. Perplexed.
“Do you not usually feel any emotions during sex?”
“I mean . . . no?”
“Wow, Phe. That’s ...” His mouth forms a few stalled words before settling on “sad.”
And if I didn’t feel small before, now I feel minuscule, because it’s as I feared. There was nothing special about our night together—for him, anyway. “You always feel something?”
He studies me—I’m an amoeba under a microscope. He speaks cautiously. “I don’t sleep with anyone I don’t already care about.”
“So I must be the exception.”
He chuckles and brushes a stray hair away from my face, tucking it behind my ear. “Phe, you were my first friend, first wife, first kiss. My feelings for you are much more complicated than just caring about you.”
“‘Complicated.’ Be still my heart.” I pull back, but he tugs me close, wrapping one arm around my shoulders.
“C’mon, Phe. Don’t make me say it,” he whispers.
“Say what?”
He sighs. “You have to know I had a painful crush on you for years.”
“You aren’t always so easy to read, Professor.” I lean back so I can look into his eyes, trying to decipher his inscrutable expression.
“Well, everyone else knew.”
I gather the courage to share my fears, revealing my wants. “But what you said last night, about fulfilling some teenage fantasy. It sounded like you thought being with me was an unsettled score. A check mark completed or something.”
“Phe, no.” Beau slips his hand onto my cheek and ducks to look directly into my eyes. “I’m so sorry I made you feel that way. I was trying to keep it light because I was overwhelmed and worried you might freak out if you knew ...”
“Knew what?”
He shakes his head, one side of his lip curling in a reluctant smile. I’m fishing. I know it. He knows it. But I’m new at this, and I need reassurance before I let this man shock my atrophied heart back to life. “That I’m out of my mind for you. And last night was a lot.”
“Well, I might lose my mind if I slept with my teenage crush. Nostalgia is powerful. And Zac Efron was a hottie.”
“Ophelia,” he sighs, refusing to take the bait, “my adolescent crush has nothing on the way I feel about you now. I think you’re incredible. No one challenges me the way you do. You’re funny, sexy, capable, kind, and loving.”
“You tell me daily that I’m ridiculous. That I’m a pain in the ass. Chaotic, irritating, and immature.”
He offers me a half smile that I catch in the moonlight. “You contain multitudes, Ophelia.”
I giggle and push him away with one hand on his stomach.
He rests his palm over mine, and the mood shifts.
The fireworks finale lights up the sky like an exclamation point, leaving smoke and silence in its wake.
Now it’s just us, the wind through the trees, and the river crawling over tumbled stone.
When he speaks again, his mouth is against the shell of my ear. “It was scary for me, too.”
My heart trumpets in my chest, and his breath hitches. “Why?”
“Because you’ve always had the power to break me. And I’m already shattered.”
I slide my fingertips over his jaw, and my nails scratch against his stubble. “I don’t want to break you. And I don’t want to be broken.” I hesitate. “But I don’t know how to prevent either.”
He drops his forehead to mine. “Just keep telling me your truths, and I’ll keep telling you mine.”
I find his mouth, which is soft and cautious, but I take his bottom lip between mine, and he whimpers before chasing the kiss.
It’s a give-and-take that was absent last night, a conversation of gentle brushes and desperate gasps as my heart bursts into a fireworks show of its own.
I crawl into his lap, my knees pressed into the hard earth, my chest sealed to his.
He wraps the blanket over my shoulders, cocooning us as the campfire licks the crisp air behind us.
My body is a riot—all senses ablaze and rattling with the thud , thud , thud of my heart.
He takes my face in his hands and pulls back. “You’re not going to panic on me again?”
I shake my head, but he waits as if he needs to hear it out loud. “No,” I say against his mouth. He steals another kiss. “But I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“You seemed to do just fine last night.” His tone triggers a deep ache that wraps around my thighs like ivy.
“Afterward,” I whine. “When you want to cuddle and do the whole pillow-talk thing. When we need to pretend to be soft and caring and not tease each other.”
He wraps his long arms around my waist and tucks my head onto his shoulder, making small circles on my spine. “You do nothing but talk. For pillow talk, do what you normally do, but after orgasms.”
I bite back a smile.
“And you are soft and caring—you’ve taken care of me this entire trip. And I don’t know where you got the idea that there would be no teasing. I still intend to tease the shit out of you.”
“Really? I can call you ‘Professor’ when you’re a pompous ass and embarrass you with off-color remarks in public?” It’s a sonnet to my soul. “I might lose things and forget about checks I’ve written and leave car doors open.”
“All part of your charm.”
“Okay.” I grin. I gather a lungful of air and exhale as he curls his fingers under the sweatshirt to find the bare skin at my waist. I want to let him strip me in the cold bite of the evening air.
“How many layers do you have on?”
“Too many,” I say.
“It’s a metaphor for your emotional armor.”
I tilt my head back and laugh, but he grabs me by the waist and lifts me off his lap. I grow cold instantly.
“Come on,” he says. “Let me get you properly naked so we can practice all that intimacy you’re afraid of.”
He stands, threads his fingers in mine, and leads me into the tent.